Brewer 'taken aback' by Obama

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Thursday continued to stand by her portrayal of the tense exchange she had on the tarmac with President Barack Obama the previous day, saying she was “taken aback” by how offended the president was with the way he had been portrayed in her book.

“He was offended about how I portrayed him in my book. And I was taken aback,” Brewer said in a morning interview with Fox News. “And I wasn’t going to back down, obviously. I mean, I stand by what I wrote. And it was the truth, and we just seem to have to agree to disagree, I said, on immigration.”

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The book in question, “Scorpions for Breakfast,” made headlines last year when the Arizona governor described in it Obama’s “patronizing” and “condescending” behavior when the two met at the White House last summer.

Brewer insisted Thursday that she “absolutely” stands by what she wrote.

“Absolutely. Why wouldn’t I? You know, I’m talking to the most powerful man in the world, and I have respect for him. I have respect for the office. You know, I wouldn’t go out and misconstrue what our conversation was,” she said.

She repeated that the note she handed to the president after he got off Air Force One in Phoenix on Wednesday detailed the improvements she had seen in her state, and that it had nothing to do with immigration policy.

“He did not read the note. He wanted to know what was in it so I explained to him I was telling him about what we have done in Arizona to change the way we do business and how well we have been doing,” she said.

She said that the exchange ended with Obama walking away while the governor was still speaking. “He walked away. I was in the middle of a sentence and he walked away.”

Meanwhile, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) also discussed the incident on Fox Business Network’s Don Imus show on Thursday, saying that Obama is famous for his “prickly personality.”

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal “had a similar exchange with the president [as Brewer]. It’s very well-known that he has a prickly personality and I think it’s been displayed in both of those cases,” McCain said during his call to “Imus in the Morning.”

A White House official described the interaction in these terms Wednesday: “The President said he’d be glad to meet with her again, but did note that after their last meeting, a cordial discussion in the Oval Office, the governor inaccurately described the meeting in her book. The President looks forward to continuing taking steps to help Arizona’s economy grow.”

Earlier on Thursday, Brewer told KFYI radio that the interaction seemed to reveal that the president was “thin-skinned, and a little tense to say the least.”